Rambo.2

When the Russian found him, Rambo was standing in the river, chest heaving, the surviving prisoners huddled behind him. The Russian raised a pistol. “For a nobody, you cost me a lot of money.”

John Rambo read it twice. Then he folded it into a tight square and swallowed it.

The arrow took the Russian in the chest. He stared at it, puzzled, as if it were a flower. Then he fell.

Rambo’s breath went cold. He notched an arrow. rambo.2

The dossier was thin, almost insulting. One grainy photo of a man with a hawk’s nose and dead eyes. One location: a monsoon-clogged valley in northern Thailand. One objective: confirm or deny.

The rescue chopper arrived an hour later. The pilot looked at the burning camp, the dead strewn like fallen timber, and the mud-caked man standing guard over six shivering ghosts.

The first shot took the officer through the throat. The man gurgled, clawed at the barbed shaft, and fell. Then the world exploded. Searchlights sliced the rain. Whistles shrieked. Rambo melted into the brush, a ghost made of mud and vengeance. When the Russian found him, Rambo was standing

He took the photo. Click. His mission was done. He could turn back.

“They drew first blood,” he said. “Not me.”

He had brought his own war home.

He had brought something better than proof.

“Jesus Christ,” the pilot whispered. “What happened here?”